In a diary currently on the Rec List, we learn of a group of brave religious leaders who have stood up for the actual core values espoused by their diverse faiths. It can't be easy to do so, and to do so as eloquently as they have, given the intense feelings around the Cordoba House issue. Bravo for them. They LIVE their values.
You know who doesn't live his supposed values?
Newt Gingrich.
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Yes, the bloviating serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, who resigned from Congress in disgrace after his shady book deal, is now trying to keep himself in the headlines by joining super-genius Sarah Palin in denouncing the Cordoba House in lower Manhattan. He's trying to re-brand himself -- yeah, AGAIN -- as some champion of real values.
Note to America: Newt Gingrich is a sociopath who does not believe in "values" for himself -- only for you.
Evidence (though it's been evident for years): this article in Esquire about Gingrich entreating his wife to let him continue his sexual affair, all the while browbeating others as anti-family values:
He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.
He'd just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he'd given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.
The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, "How do you give that speech and do what you're doing?"
"It doesn't matter what I do," he answered. "People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."
This doesn't surprise me in the least about Gingrich, or any other Republican. For years they have used "values" as political blunt instruments to grab power and money, but don't feel that THEY have to live those values. They're too important, too great, too above the law, too rich, too smart, too superior to the little people, who they think of as those idiotic rubes in Middle America who can be fooled again and again.
So the minimal, literal description of Gingrich (I won't call him the way-too-chummy "Newt," like his D.C. media handservants) and his fellow Repubs is the word "hypocrite." But after years of this garbage -- espousing values for the people he's trying to con, while not even TRYING to live them himself -- it seems time to consider a stronger word.
SOCIOPATH.
Michael Tomasky of the Guardian (linked above), supplies the symptoms of a sociopath. Here are the first few on the list:
Glibness and Superficial Charm
Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
Every one of those symptoms describes Gingrich -- and just about the entire Republican party -- dead on. They project their own utter contempt for anything of moral value onto the rest of the world, while living their lives as complete nihilists, engaging only in selfish gratification.
Power and money are their only "values."
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(P.S. regarding Gingrich: I hope and pray that he not only runs for the White House in 2012, but that he becomes the Republican nominee. The rightwing-loving Beltway media has always been WAY too impressed by this little gasbag's supposed intelligence and charm, and they doesn't recognize that -- like their other hero John McCain -- most of America either doesn't know who he is, or have gotten a look and aren't at all impressed. So let's hope that the Sunday morning political chat show ass-kissers continue to promote Gingrich like they did McCain. Gingrich talked a big game in the 1990s, but eventually got his fat ass handed to him by Bill Clinton. Obama will whup him even better.
Republicans -- please bring on your slimy sociopath "Newt" for 2012!)